Being Self-Taught, Training for Survival

There are more and more employment options available to us and, on many occasions, we are forced to ask ourselves how to be self-taught. An attitude and an aptitude that is linked to one of the most valuable qualities a person can have: resilience.

Self-learning is increasingly possible thanks to the extraordinary tool that today is part of our lives and that we constantly have within our reach: Internet.

The information exchanged in this immense and infinite communication network allows us to end up in technical cases with one of the major components that in other times dissolved the hope and motivation of people: uncertainty.

From here, the possibility of becoming a proactive person with the ability to self-manage their learning in an autonomous and independent way becomes a matter of willingness to acquire those skills.

And this is where a large part of the value of having self-taught, and therefore proactive, people who are willing to continue growing and improving constantly, resides for new companies. But...

What does self-taught means?

Exactly, a self-taught person is one who has learned skills and knowledge by managing their learning, theorizing and putting into practice all that the professional sources from which they are being informed provide.

However, regardless of what it means, learning on one's own is transformed into a quality that makes human beings return to their constructivist capacity to learn through experience. A 100% pragmatic concept that makes us autonomous people with an extraordinary capacity to learn by ourselves.

And even more so in these days when information and communication technologies are so advanced that we have an endless number of sources from which to learn and obtain the necessary knowledge to specialise in a wide range of sectors.

So, on the basis that we have most of the knowledge at our fingertips, the question of how to be self-taught is simply reduced to one answer: attitude. It depends only on one's tenacity to achieve the objective alone, in this case, of learning knowledge and skills.

Advantages of being self-taught

The possibility of being an autonomous person for learning means that we can begin to enjoy a series of advantages that not only serve us for our competencies and work skills, but also transform us as people.

Discover the passion for learning

From the beginning we have talked about will as the gene that initiates the adventure of self-learning.

This will spontaneously generate the management and organization of mechanisms that help optimize learning processes, so that the more agile we can acquire knowledge, the more we will like to expand them.

The passion for learning begins to be seen as an attitude that represents what it is to be self-taught.

Knowing yourself

You set the limits of your learning, this is how being self-taught transforms you as a person generating a series of social attitudes:

• Develop patience, since there are many lessons in which it will be necessary to go calmly and consistently to master them.
• The perspective of life becomes compassion and empathy due to the understanding and processing of frustration and helplessness. Seeing the world from a broad perspective is one of the keys to being self-taught.
• Discipline begins to be part of the daily routine, something that guarantees success and results.

Three advantages that open the door to a number of benefits that cause many people today are wondering and looking for information on how to be self-taught.

Benefits of self-learning

We have already talked about the advantages of being self-taught, but after these advantages, we can talk about the consequences of these, which are exceptional benefits that always bring positive changes to life.

• It opens up job opportunities, as more and more companies are looking for proactive people thanks to self-learning. 
• Decisions are made with a greater degree of awareness thanks to the initiative to be informed.
• It broadens knowledge horizons, thus contributing to a productive and effective profile for society.
• Improved self-concept, as the security gained is conducive to take a step forward and implement personal business projects.
• It helps learning from mistakes.
• It helps to overcome frustration in the short term.

All of these are benefits that relate resilience to the fact of how to be self-taught and establish feedback between the two qualities that can appear together or in an orderly way. 

How and where to start being self-taught?

How to begin being self-taught is a matter of starting to follow a series of steps in which various points must be included:

• Having a clear objective you want to learn along with a model or person you admire.
• Looking for gradual sources of knowledge. This means that we can’t start with high difficulty, but to advance progressively.
• Organizing lessons, steps...
• Setting small short-term goals.
• Documenting the process (record, practice…). Keep track of the evolution.
• Always go from less to more.

The steps to start being self-taught are clear and to be able to fulfill them you need to be a tenacious and willing person.

On the other hand, there are many skills that are repeated with the pattern of self-learning and, thanks to platforms such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Telegram Groups or Virtual Courses, thousands of people can choose how to start learning something that catches their attention. Next is the list of the most suggested options to begin the journey of self-learning.

Next is the list of the most suggested options to begin the journey of self-learning.

• Learn to play the guitar and/or musical instruments.
• Basic software tutorials.
• Learn Excel.
• Learn to cook.
• Start jogging.
• Begin with graphic design.
• Tutorials on e-sports strategies.
• Learn to relax

The question of how to be self-taught is that can be easily resolved and that supposes an answer to one of the greatest personal uncertainties of these days when changing the way of seeing life can serve to change it for us.